Basement to a REAL Basement Shop #1: Should have taken more pictures.

I should have taken pictures of the basement before I got to this point. I never thought about it before I started, it was very dark and cramped. It’s hard to believe I worked in it for years in the state it was in. The only picture I could find is when I got my bandsaw it kind of shows how dark and cramped it was (you will have to take my word for how bad the basement was.)

To the left of the band saw was a old chimney that was no longer used. The floors were uneven and some spots were dirt. The basement was full of old junk that we never used and hadn’t even looked at for a number of years.

The first step was to remove the chimney, this not only gave me more room in the basement but in the kitchen and bedroom as well. The next step was to do something about the floors. I moved all my tools to one side of the basement, then using some 2 X 4’s I formed up some forms so I could re-surface the floor, I poured the new concrete over the old floor. I did the whole floor a 1/3 at a time over the coarse of a week and a half. I mixed 49 80 lbs of concrete (by hand), now the floor is flat and level and there is no longer any dirt floors! It’s soooo much easier to move my tools around now.

The foundation walls are solid granite so I framed up some stud walls, I’m not going to cover up the foundation walls I just want to be able to hang stuff on the walls.

I then moved on to electrical, the breaker panel for the house was full so we added a sub panel. Going to the new panel are the following circuits: (all circuits are home runs)

I then worked on the dust collection system. I have a Harbor Freight 2 hp dust collector, before the remodel I used a flex hose and moved it from tool to tool. I decided to make a real system complete with blast gates. I used 4 inch sch 35 pvc pipe and a # of fittings. (My next blog will have pictures of the system)